


It's Not So Easy, Loving Me

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5098394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It gets complicated sometimes.</p><p>Cas has known Dean through the thicks, and the thins, and the barely-there, living-on-a-prayer moments of desperation. And it gets complicated, sometimes. Who hurt who? What hurt more? How could he, why didn’t he, what if, what if, what if?<br/>When Cas speaks with Dean, these days, he holds a thousand broken strands of unfinished conversations wrapped around his clenched fists, his straining arms, his lined and aching torso. He can’t forget them. It is not in his nature to forget such things as these.<br/>He wishes it were. He thinks about how much easier it would all be if he could simply snip through all their threads, release himself and Dean, let them both move as freely around each other as they used to, before they got all tangled in each other’s mayhem.<br/>Dean knows about the threads. He knows exactly where to tug to make Cas’ limbs jerk, to pull him forwards, to break his fingers, to tear him in half.<br/>But not tonight.<br/>____________________________________________________<br/>Dean and Cas have a long history, and that can make it hard between them. But that could all change in the space of one night, or one conversation, or one simple confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not So Easy, Loving Me

It gets complicated sometimes.

Cas has known Dean through the thicks, and the thins, and the barely-there, living-on-a-prayer moments of desperation. And it gets complicated, sometimes. Who hurt who? What hurt more? How  _could_  he, why  _didn’t_  he, what if, what if, what  _if_?

When Cas speaks with Dean, these days, he holds a thousand broken strands of unfinished conversations wrapped around his clenched fists, his straining arms, his lined and aching torso. He can’t forget them. It is not in his nature to forget such things as these.

He wishes it were. He thinks about how much easier it would all be if he could simply snip through all their threads, release himself and Dean, let them both move as freely around each other as they used to, before they got all tangled in each other’s mayhem.

Dean knows about the threads. He knows exactly where to tug to make Cas’ limbs jerk, to pull him forwards, to break his fingers, to tear him in half.

But not tonight.

Tonight is different. Tonight they are watching television and Dean’s got his legs curled up, arm around the back of the sofa as though trying to hug it closer. Every now and then, when he finds something funny, Dean looks at Cas with a laugh, to make sure he gets it. It’s natural, unforced, not premeditated. Time pours them from moment to moment softly, cupping them, keeping them from falling back into the past. Shielding their eyes from the future.

“I wish we had more nights like this,” Cas says, looking over at Dean.

Dean blinks at him, and Cas can tell immediately that he’s ruined it. He swallows as all of their self-consciousness rushes back in like a hungry frost. All of their awkwardness. Those wretched ties, the ones that cut into their skin, make themselves known again.

Once more, Dean and Cas are two people who can’t get close, can’t keep away. Two bodies that can’t move how they should. Dean lifts one shoulder, straining against the rope.

“Me too,” he says, finally. “It’s good to kick back once in a while.” He sounds like he’s narrating a television commercial.  _It’s good to kick back once in a while. That’s why we’ve made all our friendly, relaxed evenings half price! Come on down to the store and see all our amazing offers. Terms and conditions apply. Relaxation may not endure the constant pressure of past wrongs and unresolved arguments._   _Always read the label._

“It is good,” Castiel says, just to say something. He’s learnt that Dean prefers not to be the last to speak. He understands why. He’s found that the end of a conversation can be a comfort or a cliff-edge, depending on how you look at it.

Fifteen minutes later, Dean speaks again, a little gruffly over the top of the television noise.

“I wish…” he begins. His throat sounds tight, as though he’s been trying to keep it closed, but those two words have managed to escape.

Cas knows this line of conversation is dangerous, because it is new. Dean does not wish. But the words come out of his mouth, undeniably, heavy with impossibility. Cas doesn’t move, because it will startle Dean; they exist in limbo, breathless, waiting. In the background, Doctor Sexy flirts with another doctor, who is presumably less sexy.

“I wish…” Dean says again, softer, and swipes a hand over his face. He looks on the point of giving up, lapsing back into silence. Cas doesn’t know what face to make to be encouraging, so he doesn’t make a face. It seems to work. “I wish I could do it all again,” Dean manages. “Right from the beginning.”

“The beginning of time?” Castiel says, amused.

“The beginning of _our_ time,” says Dean, and then shrugs and picks at a loose thread on a cushion. “You know. The barn. Everything.”

Cas squints at him.

“If you did,” he says quietly, “you probably wouldn’t end up here. Tonight.”

“Where’s here?” says Dean bleakly. “If I could do it over, I’d do it. I’d make it better.”

“How?” Cas says, seriously, not sceptically. “You only ever did what you could.”

There was a brief pause.

“There’re things,” Dean says flatly. “Things I could have done different. Things I could have – have said, or…”

“Said? What kind of things?” Cas says. Dean looks over at him, his eyes wide. In the blueish light of the television, he looks absurdly young, unlined, unmarked, untested. He sits forwards, and swallows. Cas can see the movement in his throat.

Cas sits forwards, too. He expects Dean to move back, but Dean doesn’t.

Cas’ heart begins to thud a little harder against the inside of his too-small chest.

“You know… things,” Dean mumbles. “Things about us. Things about… when we were fighting and – there was never any time…”

Cas blinks, slowly. He can feel the trailing promise of another strand around his fingers, another conversation he can’t understand and won’t forget. This one will hurt more than the others because Dean is sitting cross-legged in a loose t-shirt, and Cas is sitting directly opposite him. Cas looks down at the tanned, pitted petals of Dean’s flower hands, resting in his lap unfurled. He knows that their closeness, above all, will haunt him.

“Cas…” Dean says. Cas looks up into his eyes, and sees something he did not expect. A kind of brightness, and sadness, and recklessness. He looks as though he were about to jump, thinks Cas. Jump off something high, not knowing if he would fall, or…

“I love you,” says Dean. His voice breaks over the words, soft as a murmured confession.

Cas feels a single thread around his fingers  _snap_ , and fall away.

“ _Dean_ …” he says, wanting to reach out a hand, but still tied back, tied back, tied back.

“Cas,” Dean says urgently. “I’m sorry, I – I do. I love you.”  _Snap._ “I love you.”  _Snap._ “I love you!”  _Snap._ “I should have said it years ago. Or maybe I never should have said it. God, I don’t know, I…”

He drops his head into his hands.

“What have I done,” he mutters into them. Cas wonders if the callouses on his palms talk back.

Cas takes in a deep breath, and moves.

His hand comes to rest, ever so gently, on Dean’s knee. Dean jerks his head up as though the touch were electric.

“I love you,” Cas says, and the great thick bands of thread around his chest sigh loose, in three words. “I love you, too.”

Dean stares at him.

“You can’t,” he says, blindly, eventually. “After all the things… don’t tell me you forgot. I know you remember them all.”

Cas sighs.

“There is a reason,” he says, “that I cannot forget. Dean.”

Dean looks at him, looks and looks. He opens his mouth a couple of times, and then closes it. His fingers twitch, but do not move.

“I don’t know what to say,” he says, eventually, hoarsely.

“Say it again,” Cas says.

Dean doesn’t waste time pretending not to understand.

“I love you,” he says, and because he’s Dean, he says the rest with his hands; he reaches up, threads his fingers through Cas’, squeezes.

“I love you,” Cas whispers back. “I love you. It’s alright, Dean.” Dean stops trying to duck his head down, and lets the shine on his face show.

By increments they move closer together, speaking in touch and sighs and mutters. With every moment, they snap a thread. With every gesture, every word, they finally finish off one of the hundred conversations left hanging over the cliff-edge for years. And they finish them in the way that they always should have been finished: with  _I love you, I love you, I love you._

When at last their lips brush, and then press, and then hold, Cas swears he can feel the breeze on his cheek of a new page turning. He feels lighter than air. He feels free.

It can get complicated, sometimes. But other times, it can be as simple as three words each, in the mouths of two people who should not be apart.


End file.
